


Chasing the Sun

by authenticaussie



Series: and we can watch the stars on the water [65]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Innuendos and terrible flirting, M/M, but I know most people don't Like mas, cross-dressing used as a disguise, so better tagged than sorry!, technically the marco/ace is more blatant than the sabo/marco/ace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-10-28 19:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authenticaussie/pseuds/authenticaussie
Summary: Sabo remembers, utterly and entirely, and needs Ace's help.Ace remembers, utterly and entirely, and hates how this strange barfly reminds him of his dead best friend.





	Chasing the Sun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [midnightluck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightluck/gifts).



> probably I should always tag my stuff for 'Ace is kinda a moron' but I won't because Maybe One Day I won't need it. Anyway this is a very-late-posted (but shared months ago!) birthday present for midnightluck that's 100% based on one of her canon-ish aus that I would link but cannot find, but! I hope it's enjoyable anyway. 
> 
> A belated happy birthday to one of the most clever, dedicated people I know~

The blonde at the bar takes one look at Marco’s tattoo and claps her hands, gleeful. “Are you really a pirate?” she asks, and Ace has to press his lips together to hold back his laughter. Marco’s expression looks torn between indignant and confused, and the blonde barfly leaning on him does little to help the picture he makes. Ace is confused himself, surprised to have a sudden arrival in their previously-private conversation, but it’s always fun to see Marco look like dumbfounded.

“First Commander of Whitebeard’s fleet,” he says, and the barfly gasps, loud and theatrical.

“Wow,” she says, and that tone makes it even harder for Ace to hold back his laughter, especially when she adds, “Nothin’ like I expected.” and Marco’s expression turns oddly scandalised.

“And what were you expecting?” he asks, mouth pursing in that tiny tight way it does whenever he’s displeased, and she smiles up at him.

“Someone a lot less good-looking,” she says, and Marco does a funny blink, his mouth parting as though he’s about to say something. Nothing comes out, and Ace chokes on his laughter, then has to rub his knuckles over his mouth to disguise his grin when they both turn to look at him. 

“Got something caught in my throat,” he says under Marco’s glare, and the barfly makes a soft sad noise and goes to him. Her hands drift to his throat, lithe fingertips tickling the skin, and the touch is so unexpected that Ace pulls back with a startled, “Hey-”

“Does it hurt?” she asks, so saccharine sweet that it makes something small and uncomfortable knot in Ace’s gut, but then that nudge of sharp intelligence is back and her clever tongue adds, “I can kiss it better.”

“And here I was thinking that you were above clichés,” Ace says, and her small smile spreads into a sharp grin.

“Not when they get the point across,” she says, then leans her tucks her hand under her chin, teasing. “Are they?”

“Depends on what point you’re making,” Ace says, and watches as she tries to swallow back her smile, amusement in her eyes.

“What, you need a physical demonstration?”

“I do generally learn better through action.”

She hums, softly, her smile flickering for just a moment, and says, “Yeah, I remember.”

“Remem-?” he starts, frowning at the longing look in her eyes, but then suddenly she has his arm over his shoulders and she’s slinging herself into his lap.

He only just manages to stop himself from losing his balance and dropping them both to the floor, but he can’t bring himself to touch her, his hands hovering over the blonde’s hips. This time he can see Marco swallow back laughter, his lips quirked at the corners; he probably knows why Ace’s hands are awkwardly hovering above the girl’s waist instead of keeping her from tipping over. It’s ‘cause Ace is a coward, is why, and his brain is short-circuiting with someone this pretty sitting in his lap. The skirt tickles his knees when the blonde shifts, settling, and then she huffs and leans close to him. “Ace?” she says, and–  

(–and the fact that she’s leaning closer, the sharp edges of that grin fading into concern so familiar that something in him aches–)  

–he hates how that cadence makes him think _Sabo_.

“You- uh- comfortable?” he finally manages, slowly settling his hands down on her hips, and she smiles at him.

“Better than being on my feet in these shoes,” she says, leaning back with her arm slung over his shoulder to keep herself stable as she shows off her heeled boots. “Everything else we share fine, but shoes? Oh no, shoes is where our sizes differ. As though a pair of shoes you can run in aren’t the most important part of any outfit.”

“Do you want mine?” he says, before he can think the better of it, and she tilts her head back and laughs. Marco makes a confused gesture while her eyes are off them, and Ace, helpless, can only shrug uselessly with his one free hand. It feels a bit like panic, this fast-paced emotion running riot in his chest and in his throat, but he can’t stop himself from turning back to her when she settles again, unable to draw his attention away.

“How about,” she offers, and boops him on the nose, “that you two just carry me back to your ship when you’re ready to leave? No running required.”

From the corner of his eye, Ace watches Marco jerk. It’s a sharp, sudden movement, but tiny; Ace only notices it because he’s looking at Marco from the corner of his eye, and because he’s good at figuring out Marco’s frowns. This one is pensive. Hesitant, almost, but unbalanced, too. Ace isn’t actually sure what emotions to label this frown with, so he tucks it in the back of his head to turn over and figure out later. For now, Marco’s voice doesn’t give his hesitance away; but there’s a distinct-but-small crack when he clears his throat and says, “Two?”

“Are you not a package deal?” she asks, and suddenly Ace is dizzy for a different reason.

“You’re- flirting with both of us?” he says, one of his largest issues with this situation quite suddenly falling to the side in a way that leaves him disoriented. She looks at him like he’s a little bit stupid.

“Generally,” she starts, “when you call someone ‘good-looking’, you are flirting with them.” One shoulder lifts in a shrug, her attention sliding to the far side of the bar as though she’s watching the crowd, “Besides, you like him.” Something in the back of Ace’s head says _embarrassed_. Then it adds _surrender_ , just as she pulls on a new grin and he realises that she’s trying to hide her confession. Vulnerability gone, she leans back in his lap and lets her hands linger along his neck, bright and excitable and flirty again. “How could I break up the two of you?  Especially when it means more fun for me. Never heard of two for the price of one?”

“I think that applies in other situations more than this one,” Marco says, his eyes on Ace’s face, and Ace can’t help but take a deep breath, relieved by the chance to catch his thoughts. He can see the barfly grin at Marco, snap back at him with that sharp, witty intelligence that she’s so intent on hiding, but his head is wandering. For a moment, he tries to concentrate on breathing, the rise and fall of his chest and the noise of the crowd around them, and it almost works. Almost, bar the constant pressure of her shifting idly in his lap, and the warmth of her body on the places where they touch.

She’s still talking to Marco, still making him almost laugh, forcing him to swallow back his amusement, but Ace is far from able to concentrate on that.

Mainly because she keeps snagging his hand, tangling their fingers together, and see, he’s fine with it – well it’s more intimacy than he’s used to, more casual affection than he knows what to do with – but every time the blonde catches his hand, she puts it somewhere new; their conjoined hands start on her knee, creep up to her thigh, flitter to her waist, then to her hip, then to her bare shoulder, and she keeps- she keeps doing this thing with her thumb, running her fingertips over the back of Ace’s hand-

And she’s doing it now, rubbing circles against Ace’s hand as she presses Ace’s palm against her thigh, and her stockings only go up so high; the edge of Ace’s thumb rests under the hem of her skirt, on bare skin, and he sort of feels like he’s choking. Possibly on his own heart but probably on his tongue, considering that he hasn’t really managed an intelligent sentence since she’d sat down in his lap and leaned against him, her body curled towards his.

“You know,” she says, and her tone has that sort of curious-teasing-terrible cadence that Sabo used to add to his voice every time he’d wanted something, “I’ve never been on a real pirate ship before.”

“No?” Ace manages, and catches Marco’s narrow-eyed look, knowing Marco hasn’t missed the croak in his throat.

She leans in just a little bit, and over-articulates the pop to her words. “Nope.”

Ace handles her being even closer with the grace he’s come to expect from himself tonight.

Namely, none at all.

He only just manages to not send them toppling as his body locks up and the rickety stool tips onto three legs instead of four, but it’s a near thing, and he finds himself noting the blemishes in her makeup and the way she’s quite clearly wearing contacts to disguise the white filament on her left eye. Honestly, he thinks idly, trying not to think to hard in case more thoughts about her skirt and her skin decide to make a home in his head, it’s quite odd that he noticed those things. Mainly because at the same time he noticed her makeup he’d also noticed that her lips are sorta glittery because of her lip gloss, and it’s really very pretty, and the pink-red-partial-nervous-bite to her bottom lip reminds Ace of Marco’s mouth after Ace has kissed him a bunch, and those two thoughts are so distracting when paired together that his stomach flips.

He looks at Marco, trying to figure out how to articulate the question in his throat, how to say, _can we?_ but also _is this safe?_ and Marco steps down from his stool and lays his hand on Ace’s bicep.

“Would you like to see one?” he asks, his broad hand sliding down to Ace’s shoulder, behind where she can see, and his thumb rubbing a small, comforting circle on Ace’s skin. It helps, but only partially. Partially, because Ace is used to taking comfort from Marco’s gentle touches, but he also likes Marco’s touches, more than is strictly fair to like someone’s touches, and so it’s making warm shivers jump up Ace’s spine. When paired with his thoughts about the barfly, it becomes almost impossible to stop imagining what they’re both alluding to.

“I’ve never seen a pirate’s quarters, either,” she adds, just as slow as Marco’s drawling question, only she sounds more-

The curve of her mouth, the way she smiles; Ace’s chest gives a tiny, tight pang yet again, head full of memories of Sabo’s sharp grin as he’d taunted and teased and tricked his way to what he wanted.

“That could be arranged, too,” Marco says, even slower, and he’s looking at Ace as if to say _is this what you want?_ but with none of the accusation that Ace would expect from a question like that. _Is this what you want,_ but only because Marco wants to check that he’s okay, and that this will make him happy, because Marco likes it when he’s happy. 

He’d answer, but the barfly has turned to him again, tilts into him with her eyes still on Marco but her lips so close to Ace’s ear that the warmth of her breath makes him suppress a shiver, and she whispers, “I’ve never made out with a pirate. Would you two help with that as well?”

Ace can’t help the embarrassed heat that scores across his cheeks, bright and hot like his fire, and this time when she laughs, it’s ungainly. It sounds better on her, the way she snorts at his embarrassment, and Ace is almost angry. Almost angry, because he doesn’t usually care about being flirted with, but everything about this barfly-

She gets under his skin in a way that only Sabo used to do, and it feels a little bit like it’s killing him. It feels a little bit like he should say, _and you won’t_ , but instead he finds himself saying, “I have.”

“Oh, multiple?” she asks, laughing at him, teasing him, and Ace’s brain short-circuits, awkwardly. He doesn’t have time to think of a response before she slides off his lap and smooths down her skirt. She looks at Marco, then holds out her hand, palm up. “Ready to give me a tour, Phoenix?”

“Can you handle it?” he asks, tone matching hers, but Marco’s looking at him and Ace feels his stomach squirm. He nods, short and sharp and maybe a little bit without thinking, and so Marco turns his attention back to the barfly and takes her hand, letting her lace their fingers together and grin.

“You don’t know what I could handle,” she says, anticipation and danger like a promise in how she bares her teeth, and Ace is undeniably glad that he’s trained a lot with his fire. He feels trapped in his skin, hot and ungainly, and were it not for his endless hours practicing with Marco, he has a feeling that many of the bar’s wooden mugs would be nothing but ash.

She turns back to him, gives a blink of her bright, bright blue eyes, and then asks, “Coming?”

He can’t think fast enough; can’t think of a reason not to, and so he slides off the stool and after her.

If this is a mistake…well, he’s made more than a couple in his life, and adding this one won’t kill him.

Probably.

She leans into him as they exit the bar, pressing into his side until he slings an arm around her shoulders, and she tugs Marco in close, too, until the three of them are tangled up in each other. She keeps laughing, as well, teasing just as she’d teased in the bar, but away from the people her smile gets softer and the glint in her eyes get more mischievous, and with every word Ace’s heart keeps beating out the rhythm of Sabo’s name, like it’s trying to say, _this is him, this is him, can’t you see the ghost of him in every joke she makes?_

It’s starting to hurt, almost. Like a bruise being beaten into his lungs, or maybe, an old injury that he’d never let heal that has finally decided to remind him that it exists. That comparison isn’t neat enough for his tastes, though; Sabo’s death has always been a constant pain, and Ace has never forgotten that its existence.

A pair of men in uniform stroll by, tilting their hats at Marco as a greeting, and the barfly giggles, burying her face in Ace’s chest. The sound is different from her other laughter; high-pitched, a little nervous, a little more uncontrolled, and for the first time tonight he starts to wonder who she is.

But his hand is curled around her shoulders, her body pressed close and warm to his, and when she looks up at him as the guards pass, she whispers conspiratorially, “Bet it’s weird strolling past them without thinking that we’ve gotta hide.”

And Ace thinks again:

 _Sabo_.  

* * *

 They get back to the ship without passing any more officers, and every step onto the gangplank makes her relax and pull further forward till she’s out of their hands and standing in the middle of the deck with a grin. “Wicked,” she says, head tilted back as she turns in a slow circle to look at the sails, “your ship’s huge.” Her mouth curls into a smirk, and she brings her attention back to them, pointed, sharp amusement in her eyes, as though asking them, _did you hear my joke_?

“Tour?” he manages, and she strolls back over to them, no longer bouncing on her toes and twirling around like the ditz she’d played back in the bar. From the corner of his eye, Ace can see Marco stiffen. He can’t stop himself from tensing, either, when she rests her hand in the middle of his chest.

“Can we start in your room?” she asks, and it’s still sorta flirty, but then some switch seems to flip and she squints at him before taking a step back. “My makeup’s starting to run,” she offers, and Ace, for one confused second, thinks that she knows that they’re on edge, and that they’re having second thoughts about letting her on their ship. Into their home.

But that can’t be right; they’re tense, but any self-respecting barfly thinks of the personally-bad connotations of tenseness before they think of their partner’s unease, and both he and Marco are good at hiding when they’re uncomfortable, anyway. Her excuse is clever, and unexpectedly kind, when her earlier behaviour had suggested she’d wanted them for one thing and one thing only.

“My brother has more, if you would like to reapply any,” Marco says, his voice stilted as formality re-enters his tone, and she waves her hand.

“Nah. It’ll be fine if I take it off here.”

For a moment, awkwardly, they wait in the dark. She doesn’t know where to go, and both Ace and Marco don’t know what to do, hesitant when confronted by this subtle shift in her behaviour.

“If we’re gonna just be standing here, can I at least take my shoes off?” she says finally, and Ace jolts.

“Nah, no, we can-” he tries, and steps forward to offer out his arm. “We can take you somewhere to sit down?” he offers, his eyes on Marco, and he can see Marco raise his eyes to the night sky in what’s almost a silent prayer.

“Ace’s room isn’t far,” Marco says, but he’s lying; Marco’s room is the one closest to the deck, and Ace has to bite his tongue to stop himself from saying anything. The barfly looks at them both, but then she smiles and wraps her hands round Ace’s arm and lets him walk her into the dark.

They’re both lying, he thinks. The flat way she’d pressed her lips together just before she’d she smiled had given her away, but he doesn’t say anything about her, either.

Marco follows after them, blue fire lighting the path, and she makes an impressed, appreciative noise as they stroll down the hall. Marco’s room isn’t right near the stairs – he’d kill anyone stumbling down the stairs drunk after late-night parties if that were the case – but it’s close enough that she only winces a little bit when they stop outside the door and she can pull her boots off. Almost immediately, she and Ace are much closer in height, and she grins at him, eyes flicking up the half-inch she has on him.

“Looks like I’m older,” she says, and Ace frowns and is about to ask what she means when she steps into Marco’s room. She snickers softly to herself as she steps inside, and then turns around to raise an eyebrow. “Neater than I thought you’d be, Ace,” she says, and Ace’s frown deepens. She says that like she knows his habits, knows that this isn’t Ace’s room, and her remarks keep throwing him off.

Marco comes up behind him, his hand settling into the small of Ace’s back like a warning, and he points to a door in the corner. “Bathroom is just through there,” he says. “Some of Ace’s clothes should be hanging up, too, if you’d like to change into anything more comfortable.”

“Selling him out,” she says, hands on her hips. “I like it.” With a nod at the two of them, she steps into the bathroom, and a moment later Ace can hear the water running and a very loud, relieved sigh. “Makeup is so gross,” she says, and then she’s silent bar the odd grumble as she splashes water on her face. Marco’s hand presses a little more firmly on his back, guiding him forward, and Ace looks up to see his hard expression.

“In,” Marco says, and Ace winces and then takes two big steps and flops face-first onto Marco’s bed. The door closes with a soft click.

“She’s only a room away,” he says, the words dulled by the pillows, and Ace feels the bed dip as Marco sits next to him.

“So, we’ll talk quietly,” he says. “But we are talking about this.”

“This as in what pose we should take when she gets out of the bathroom?” he offers, purposefully ignoring the tinge of commander of Whitebeard’s fleet, first division that’s in Marco’s stern tone. Marco braces his hands in Ace’s back and pushes down till a part of his spine pops and he squirms up and away. “Fine,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “Talking.”

“Flirting is- fine,” Marco starts, and Ace feels discomfort start to well up in his chest. Had he been wrong about what Marco had wanted to talk about? “I don’t- care about sharing you, or any of that nonsense; you’re your own person, and we’re pirates. What’s the use of saying fuck society if we can’t pick other things that make us happy? I just- want to make sure you’re safe. And- I’m pretty sure this woman is hiding something.”

 _Welp_ , he thinks, _not wrong_.

“She called me Phoenix,” Marco says, and his words are picked slow and deliberate as he tries to weigh out what they mean for both himself and Ace. “When she came up to us, she asked if we were pirates, and then seemed amazed when you told her who I was, but then, just before we left- she called me Phoenix. How would she know that, but not my rank?”

“She could have just been faking it to flirt-”

“Ace, she’s just faking it, full stop.”

“What if she isn’t!”

“What if she is?” Marco hisses, “She’s in the bathroom now, and we don’t know who she is or how she fights, and only half of division four is on watch tonight. If she’s subtle about it, and lucky, she could get around the whole ship. What if she’s planning something, what if she picked us for a reason-”

“Why are you so suspicious?” Ace demands, a sharpness that pricks his throat making him clench his fists, and Marco makes a frustrated noise.

“Because you aren’t!” 

“You were fine with it in the bar!”

“Yeah, and then her whole personality changed!” He growls, low and inarticulate, and then grabs Ace’s hand and pulls it into his lap, forcing Ace’s fist open to twine their fingers together. “Ace, why are you acting like this. Tell me.”

“I’m not acting like-” he starts, but Marco looks at him and the words die in his throat. “It’s because-”

The sharp way she grins at him, the way she snorts her laughter when she makes her flirts just a tiny bit insulting, the brazen way she’d taken physical affection, as though she knew exactly how much he wanted and couldn’t ask for.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and can’t help how raw and aching that word is as it comes out of his throat. He can see Marco lean away from him, suddenly realising how much this has taken its toll, even if Marco doesn’t know what this is. “It- she- she just reminds me of Sabo.” He swallows, hard. “She reminds me of Sabo,” he whispers, and then Marco’s arms are around him and Ace is sinking into his comforting embrace, trying to keep breathing.

The door to the bathroom opens, heralded by the click of the lock. Ace winces and tries to push himself out of Marco’s arms, unhappy that she’s caught him in this moment of vulnerability and ready to apologise and ask her to leave.

“Thanks for getting me out of there, bro-” she starts, and her voice- the sound of it, her accent, it all sounds different now. It sounds deeper, and even more familiar, and he grits his teeth and lets himself take just another second of strength from Marco’s arms around him.

That second means that the first person to look at the barfly with her makeup off is Marco, and Ace can feel his body stiffen. “Wha-?” he starts, and then shakes his head and pushes Ace away so that Ace can see that their female barfly is now someone heavily scarred by burns and male and-

And _Sabo_.

He’s pretty sure he hears something snap in his head, some confused part of himself saying, _oh that’s why she reminded you of Sabo_ at the same time as all the rest of him goes, _Sabo’s dead, how is he here?_

“Ace?” says the barfly-that-may-be-his-brother, unhappy and concerned, and Ace reels backwards, scrambling off the bed so that he can get to his feet and back away.

“You- what-?” he starts, and then suddenly he can feel his throat getting way-to-tight way to quickly and he can hear Marco’s voice saying, Ace, breathe, but he is, he knows he is, he’s definitely breathing, it’s just way to fast- “Sabo?”

“Yeah?” he says, nodding slowly and staring at Ace, and slowly his hands come up, palms flat. “Ace, what’s going on?”

“You died!” Ace says, and suddenly he can breathe again, like a wave crashing through his panic, rage overtaking his confusion. “What- what do you think is going on?! What are you-”

“ _Died_?” says Sabo, his voice pitched high, “I’m not dead!”

“Your ship blew up!” Ace yells, and then he has to wrap his hands around himself because his heart is expanding, maybe, or maybe the uncontrollable panic is coming back, and either way he can’t deal with it right now. “How are you- what are you doing-”

“I was trying to get off Goa!” Sabo says, still loud and confused, and Ace lets out an unintelligible string of words that may be a repeat of Sabo’s own protest but just makes Sabo squint at him. It’s a different sort of squint, with one eyebrow raised, and Ace remembers Sabo trying to hold his eyebrow down to try and cock the other and mimic Makino’s disapproving expression, and how he could never manage it the way he’s somehow managing it now.

 _Dead_ , thinks Ace, _fake_ , thinks Ace, _how dare he_ , thinks Ace, and he lunges forward and maybe-not-Sabo yelps and ducks to the side and pushes him in the stomach with the heel of his palm, like he always did when they fought, and Ace-

He pulls his body through the movement, goes down and swings his leg around, but that was always his move and maybe-actually-Sabo is already in the air, but Ace is fire now, and he can get up faster, and so Sabo - proper, actual, _Sabo_ \- isn’t ready for Ace in front of him, slamming him down into the wooden floorboards by his throat, pinning his shoulder down with his free hand.

Sabo makes a sharp choking sound, his only hand wrapped around Ace’s wrist, trying to push him off, and then he looks at Ace’s eyes, and his mouth parts, just a little.

“Shit,” he breathes, the sound so quiet that Ace can barely hear it, but Sabo’s stopped struggling and Ace is breaking, maybe, and after fights like this he always pulls back, but he can’t, so he only stops putting pressure on Sabo’s throat. “You really did think I’d died, didn’t you?” Sabo whispers, the sound croaked and bruised and Ace’s chest jumps with his unsteady breath.

“Fuck you,” he manages, knowing he sounds weird and snotty and unable to make his voice sound any less like he’s about to start crying. “What else would I think, watching you blow up, and you never coming home?”

“I sent a letter,” Sabo says, weakly, but Ace can see the regrets in his eyes and his throat is too tight to let any other words up. He buries himself into Sabo’s chest, and can feel Sabo’s arms hesitantly coming up to wrap him in a hug.

“You idiot,” he whispers, hands clutched in Sabo’s shirt. “I thought you were dead.”

“Surprise,” Sabo says back, but there’s an apologetic note to his words, and Ace is pretty sure his hoarseness isn’t just because Ace had been choking him half-a-minute previous. His hand strokes down Ace’s back, and he doesn’t say anything about Ace trembling, so Ace doesn’t say anything about Sabo’s heart thumping against his knuckles.

“Uh-” goes Marco, in the particular tone he uses when he’s trying to figure out how to interrupt but doesn’t have the words, and Ace takes another slow breath, matched to the rise and fall of Sabo’s chest, before he turns his head to look at Marco. He offers a rueful, apologetic smile, and watches Marco’s confusion melt into fond acceptance.

Sabo props himself up onto his elbow, but his hand stays pressed firmly on Ace’s hip, a silent sign that he doesn’t have to move from where he’s lying. “So, you’re Marco,” he says, “I know that- we technically met in the bar, but forsures if this one didn’t recognise me–” he jostles his hip into Ace’s stomach, and Ace yelps and then digs his fingers into Sabo’s side to make him snort out pained laughter, “–I’m Sabo. Nice to meetcha.”

“I’ve heard of who you were to Ace,” Marco says, carefully, and Ace knows he’d probably continue, but Sabo’s faster.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of who you are, too.” For a second, Sabo’s grip almost tightens on Ace’s hip, and Ace presses his hands to Sabo’s chest in warning, but then Sabo’s tone softens, and his barfly grin comes back. “You’re better looking in person.”

Marco makes a noise in the back of his throat again, this time out of confusion rather than trying to interrupt, and Sabo laughs, his chest moving in sharp jolts that forces Ace to shift on top of Sabo lest he end up on the floor.

“I don’t think he’ll kick you out,” Ace says, and he can feel his mouth quirk up as he glances at Marco’s flustered expression. “You don’t have to keep flirting if you don’t want to.”

“Who wouldn’t want to flirt with one of the most powerful people on Whitebeard’s crew? You know how I am about competency, Ace.”

Ace snorts, managing to keep it from full laughter, but then Sabo adds in a purposefully casual drawl, “Your new fighting style...that’s pretty good, too. I saw you when you were in the bay taking out that marine ship.”

“I- you saw that?” Ace says, instead of following the thread of their full conversation, but Sabo’s hand on his hip still suddenly feels more pointed, and he shifts so that he’s sitting on Sabo’s thighs instead of sprawling full-body.

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” Sabo says, and he lets his hand slide from Ace’s hip to the exposed part of skin on his thigh as Ace shifts, and he kind of regrets moving, now, because Sabo’s looking up at him and Ace’s stomach is hot and tied in knots. “Possibly for reasons more selfish than wanting to see you again.”

“Uh-” he starts, mimicking Marco, but his noise is more stuck that Marco’s had been, and no words helpfully come to his aid. Sabo laughs, tilting his head back and sliding his hand through his hair till it stops at a tangle.

“You always used to hit me and yell shut up when I got you tongue-tied,” he teases. “Should I take your blush as a promising sign?”

“I’m not blushing!” he says, and Sabo pokes the tip of his tongue out, his eyes crinkled in a way that belies his amusement.

“Yeah, sure.” He pats Ace’s leg, condescending even though his tone isn’t, and Ace groans and pushes his hand away. It drifts back a second later, a persistent weight that he can’t – doesn’t want? he wonders – to ignore. “Shall I also presume that you’re not flustered, too?”

“I thought you were dead and your response half-a-minute later was to flirt with me and my now-catatonic boyfriend,” Ace drawls, a sharp edge to his tone, and he hears Marco go hey! but he’s more preoccupied with how Sabo’s expression tightens, his lazy, pleased amusement pulled under a frown. It’s like he expects to be chastised for showing them his bright grin, and he’s used to pulling on a more serious expression to hide his natural propensity for mischief and laughter.

“Should I stop?” he asks, beginning to draw his hand away from Ace’s leg, and Ace takes a deep breath.

“No,” he says, thinking about Sabo in his lap and his lips on Ace’s cheek and Sabo pinned underneath him right now. He puts his hand on Sabo’s, pressing down to stop him from moving away. “I don’t need you to stop.”

“Do you want me to?” Sabo asks, but Ace can see from the amusement in the corner of his mouth that he knows what Ace is saying.

He flicks Sabo in the nose, grinning when Sabo indignantly yells at him, and says, “I’m fine. Marco’s probably broken, considering you’re way better at flirting than me, but. I’m fine.”

“Your care is acknowledged and appreciated,” Marco says dryly. “It’s times like this that I remember exactly why we started dating.”

Ace snorts, grinning at Marco, because Marco’s tone says displeasure but he’s sliding off the bed to kneel next to the two of them, and he bends his head to press the softest kiss to Ace’s bare shoulder. He lifts his head to watch Sabo for a moment, and Ace knows he’s thinking; then he offers his hand out, just as Sabo had done to him an hour or so ago, palm flat in silent invitation.

Sabo regards him in much the same way, a full minute of shrewd calculation hanging in the silence between them, and then moves the hand keeping him propped up to let it rest in Marco’s. In the back of his head, Ace almost laughs, because he can feel Sabo’s core start to shake as he tries to hold himself upright. He grins devilishly at Sabo and leans forward again, putting more of his weight onto Sabo so that it’s harder for him to stay up.

“Shall I take this as you still wanting to make out?” Sabo says, and Ace jolts forward in surprise and embarrassment and they go tumbling down, off-balance. Sabo whacks his skull on the floor with a yell, and Ace’s forehead thwacks into Sabo’s collarbone with an unfortunate, audible, crack.

“Fuck!” they both say, at the same time, and then Marco’s concern is filtering through the haze of pain in his head and Ace groans and keeps his head pressed against Sabo’s chest.

This choice didn’t kill him, but the universe seems determined to prove that Sabo’s flirting will.


End file.
